While it is early in poll and voting analyses to draw any final conclusions, one overlooks the importance of staying on message down the home stretch at their own peril. This obviously includes making the right priorities in determining how the short time allotted to candidates in campaign rallies (and the television coverage of those speeches) is spent–in short, which messages should be stressed. I would argue that Hillary contributed mightily to her own demise based on some of the data that has been revealed even this early, as well as my own observations–made now and in the past. Sure, FBI Director Comey’s meddling in the election where and when he shouldn’t have no doubt played a big part in the outcome, as did latent racism among the large cohort of white, low educated, men and women. (More on the latter gender-group’s voting patterns in a moment). Those were known going into the final ten or so days, and despite those influences, a solid victory was still in reach by...

After more than a year of campaigning, the election tomorrow–not at all to exclude early voters–comes down to this: 1) Will the pause in the damage Hillary suffered at the polls with the undecided voters due to FBI Director Comey’s shenanigans, continue? 2) Will Comey’s exoneration of Hillary from any wrongdoing connected to the newly discovered email on ex-Congressman Weiner’s server produce some recovery of the independents who left Hillary over the insinuations–and Trump’s vicious attacks on her over it? 3) Will anything unexpected from outside of the presidential campaigning pop-up at the last minute to influence the voting. Politicians will be holding their breathes as the hours pass. I won’t get into Director Comey’s decision to interfere with the race, in the first place although I do have strong feelings about it. But it unquestionably did change Hillary’s support. In the period between Comey’s announcements, Clinton’s poll numbers dropped from a comfortable 6.8 percent down to a dangerously low 1.8 percent. Of importance to the undecideds decision-making, Hillary’s trust numbers dropped 3...

When Bernie Sanders famously said: “Enough of those damned emails,” many thought they’d heard the death-knell of that wearisome argument. Just this week, President Obama referred to it as “all that noise,” designed to confuse new voters about Hillary’s trustworthiness. The concept of “noise” comes from cybernetics and it refers to anything that interferes with a message sent by one party to another–we laymen also know it as static. Sad to say, we are all familiar with static on our cell phones which keep us from hearing the other person’s words and messages. The static in this case, as we all know by now, are the dark references to some of Hillary’s emails. Of the emails, President Obama also noted that while Clinton, while serving as his Secretary of State, made an “honest mistake” by using a private email server, as it was now “being blown up into just some crazy thing,” which will affect new voters when they hear “all that noise.” Why now, you may ask, all of this focused static. Well,...

Hillary still leads in the national polls, although that lead has shrunk almost daily over the past week. The RCP Poll of polls shows a 30 percent drop in Hillary’s lead, down to just a little over 4 percent. The magnitude of the drop can be seen by comparing the last three ABC News Tracking polls. In polls covering the period 10-20 to 10-22, Hillary’s lead over Donald Trump was 12 percentage points. In their polling covering 10-21- to 10-24 her lead had declined to 9 points. In their 10-23 to 10-26 poll, Hillary’s lead was down to just 4 points. This kind of drop should be alarming to the Clinton camp coming so late in the race for President. Other polls also show a downwards trend for Hillary. My sounding board daughter now focuses on Hillary’s electoral lead, which is still significant. However, key battleground states still show leads for Clinton so small that her electoral advantage (ranging from the 70 votes above the 270 needed for victory, to 18...

Most instant polls gave Hillary the win in Wednesday’s final presidential debate. Meanwhile, Trump is again claiming victory and citing online polls as his proof despite the fact that those site-specific popularity contests have been discredited by virtually every legitimate pollster. Some have even encouraged their audiences to vote more than once. Trump dismisses the respected polls, who generally found him losing to Hillary, as part of his falsely claimed “rigged” election. If you watched Fox after the election you would think you were in a different reality where, as usual, they praised the Republican candidate’s performance and decried the Democrat’s. Though some of Fox’s guests were unable to stomach Trump’s refusal to say he would accept the results, no matter who won. By the way, Trump doubled down Thursday morning by saying that he’d accept the results, “if I win,” strongly implying that he wouldn’t otherwise. London bookmakers see a Hillary victory as almost certain. Hillary has an 83 percent chance of winning according to them. The respected Nate Silver is...

Part 1, Monday, Oct. 10 My daughter Lisa, whom I often use as a sounding board, was outraged, to put it mildly, over Trump’s latest denigration of women. This time, she said in an exchange of e-mails, ‘Trump has crossed so far over the line that,he’s “toast.” No possibility of recovering from this. Of course she was referring to the vulgarities and outright hostility towards women that poured out of Trump’s own mouth in tapes released Friday. From Trump’s distorted perspective, it was nothing more than “locker room” talk. Many, however, agreed with Senator Tim Kaine’s assessment that “The tape raises an awful lot of questions … a pattern of assaultive behavior, not just words.” Actually, when Trump averred that as a celebrity he could “move-in” on just about any “hot chick” and “grab her pu–y,” he was advocating sexual assault. No minor locker-room banter, he was talking about committing a felonious act. At the least, he was vulgarly objectifying women. Think about your mother, sisters, daughters, and wife–well wives, three of them...